gingerbread and junk

Remember that walk a while ago down in the low-running Rum?

K finally remembered the bucket filled with junk we had found interesting and pulled out of the icy river bed. I'm sure this is something all kids her age do, but she mildly infatuated with "cleaning" things. Give that girl something dirty, an old toothbrush, and a few drops of dr. bronner's (we're a peppermint family) and she's set.

A few days ago she asked me to bring in the bucket from the back porch (it was a balmy 10 degrees out there), she got her cleaning toothbrush and, after a warning from me about how absolutely everything in the bucket was made of broken glass and could slice her finger right open if she wasn't careful, she spent the next 15 minutes cleaning 80+ years of sludge from our treasures.
K's collecting these bits of broken pottery. They're neat thick brown glazed (cream on the inside) and we'll have to bring them by the historical society down the road to see what they are. This area of the Rum, being less that a mile from the juncture with the Mississippi, was home to lots of mills and bottlers and factories. And of course the river was the dump often, too.

Okay, what is that round thing in the left corner? - my vote is that it's the top of a lamp or something. It's metal, and there's a small hole in the middle of the (now dented) top. I'd love to know!

The other curiosity was this old partial bottle: "Why not Wineberre" the bottle reads, and "WINEBERRE BOTTLING CO," "PAT'D NOV 20, 1923," and "ANOKA, MN" - a google search reveals nothing but an old sign and an awesome photographer from duluth's my space page...

So here's the worlds' first page for the Wineberre beverage bottle. What is Wineberre? No idea. Maybe someone else out there on the internet knows...



~
The girls' fun of this past week was making the gingerbread house we picked up from our monthly trip to Trader Joes. I attempted to hide it, but of course K's on to all that and excitedly told me she "saw something in our cart like that box!" They got bored waiting for the egg white to get to stiff peaks, and I was the icing master to keep the mess to a minimum, but aside from that, they had a blast. This kit was awesome in that it was simple, few pieces, easy to construct, and didn't have a ton of junk in it. Yay $7 German imports!

The girls told me where to put the icing, and they stuck everything on by themselves.

Trust me, cute little hansel, gretel, and the "grandmother" (the girls called her) look a lot cuter than they, um, taste.

oh, and the poor cottage doesn't look much like this any more. More sort of post-meteorite impact.

(sorry little sugar guys! you'll be put out of your misery soon!)